Brooklyn

A member of the Save Our Streets organization rings the bell for each of the victims who died due to gun violence in Brooklyn. Photo by Taisha Henry.

Dozens of people gathered in Crown Heights, Brooklyn and chanted “I watch your son, you watch mine.” “Enough is enough.” They held signs that read, “Youth Matter, Black Lives Matter.”

They rallied, they marched, they held vigil yesterday in memory of Carey Gabay and the 94 Brooklyn victims of gun violence. Carey Gamble served as an attorney in Governor Cuomo’s administration, and was killed by a stray bullet during a West Indian Day celebration on Sept. 17th.

City officials, residents, chaplains, community outreach organizations, and residents of all races, walked a mile, praying and chanting to Ebbets Field.

Marcher, Devine Alexander of St. Albans, Queens, is a member of Guns Down Life Up (GDLU), an organization that works to dissuade youth from turning to guns. Alexander, who was once an inner city kid himself, understands it can be hard to escape violence. He believes there are better ways to cope with the struggle inner city kids may face. His group provides mentoring and an outlet for kids to have someone to talk to.

Devine Alexander is a member of Guns Down Life Up (GDLU) an organization that aims to dissuade youth from a gun-violent lifestyle. Crown Heights, Brooklyn. photo by Taisha Henry.

“There’s a lot of unsaid reasons why kids go the way they go, maybe not being financially secure, not having a place to live, or just no no one to talk to, “Alexander said. “So we’re here just to set an example that you can change your life and be a prime citizen of society”.

Alexander believes that his organization and others like it, provide action and change in the community. He said he has seen kids in his organization move away from a violent lifestyle and lead others to do the same.

“We’re trying to start a mindset when they’re very young to educate them, that guns do kill people and guns are dangerous,” he said.

Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo, one of the officials who led the rally, believes that boroughs should have an office dedicated to gun violence with responders who come within 72 hours of a gun-violence incident.

For Debbie Parker getting her hair cut always led to arguments with her barbers. They always tried to talk her out of cutting her hair short, but Parker, who is a lesbian, prefers her hair short.

“I had a lot of male barbers that would cut my hair and they would not be into cutting it down really low [short],” said Parker, 55, a landscape photographer and resident of Sunset Park, Queens. “They tried to talk me into keeping it a little longer.”

But Khane Kutzwell, 43, came to the rescue with her barbershop, Camera Ready Kutz that caters to the grooming needs of the LGBT community. On her website, she includes queer, asexual and intersex people to her barbershop in the comfort and privacy of one of her apartment’s bedrooms at Eastern Parkway in Crown Height, Brooklyn.

Parker’s colleague told her about Camera Ready Kutz three years ago and she has been a customer ever since. She even brought her 14-year-old son there after a hair clipper was pressed to tight to his scalp and cut him in a traditional barbershop.

“A lot of barbers tend to put a lot of pressure on the scalp when they were cutting his hair and he didn’t like the experience,” Parker said. “It’s like a dentist, you have to feel comfortable to go on a regular basis.”

They travel 30 minutes to get to Kutzwell’s two bedroom apartment, where one of the bedrooms serves as a barbershop.

Kutzwell started her barbershop in 2007 when her friends in the LGBTQ community complained about the service they received at neighborhood barbershops. For the community, getting a haircut is an irksome experience because they could never get what they wanted.

Kutzwell’s family emigrated from Trinidad and Tobago when she was really young and she grew up in Far Rockaway, Queens. Her upbringing shaped who she is today.

“I didn’t grow up male or female,” she said. “My family just treated me as whatever I presented at the moment.”

Now she identifies herself as a trans-entity, an entity who’s always transitioning through gender. But in the male dominated business, Kutzwell identifies herself as a female.

“I wake up sometimes and I feel more male than female, sometime more female than male,” she said, “So, I don’t identify as anything in particular, I just let myself be.”

Kutzwell said that she is not the barber for the LGBT community.

“If you look it up on the internet, there are tons of other LGBT friendly barbershops, so I’m not claiming that I’m the only one here,” she said. “But I always try to step up the game through the internet.”

Apart from promoting the business through website and Facebook, she has built a mobile app to make reservation easier for her prospective customers.

Although Kutzwell’s barbershop caters to the LGBT community, her customers include people from all backgrounds, races, gender, sexual orientation, and religion, such as the Orthodox Hasidic Jewish Community in Brooklyn and Muslim women. Her vast range of clientele gives her a boarder sense of different cultures in the world.

“Every culture has their own way of conducting haircut, like the Hasidic Jewish, they don’t want their side to be touched, or Muslim women who would only remove their headscarf in front of the people they trust,” she said. “Those cultural variations always amazed me.”

Apart from offering tolerant service, Kutzwell has many promotional discounts such as her famous “Get A, Get 50 percent off” program for students who get good grades.

“In the end, it’s about supporting your community,” she said.

Kutzwell’s next project will be her own mortar and brick storefront LGBT friendly barbershop in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. She hopes the barbershop will be a place where people can hang out and get their hair and nails done in a nonjudgmental space. Her dream is to have barbers and beauticians, who share her belief of unprejudiced service to the LGBT community, housed in one spot.

“I’m planning on taking a beautician class, so I can take a better care of my clients,” she said. “After all, I’ve always wanted to go back to school and sharpen up my skill.”

Members of Team Red, White & Blue, Team Rubicon and The Mission Continues run beside and cheer on one of the final finishers of the fourth annual “Run As One” 5k on March 28, 2015. Photo by Stacey Kilpatrick

Ten American flags waved patriotically as the gusty air blew throughout Central Park on a recent Saturday at about 11 a.m. Roughly 200 veterans and civilians, sporting patriotic colors, “Run As One” red t-shirts and running sneakers, gathered at the Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. They were awaiting a speech by Team Red, White & Blue New York Community Captain Joe Quinn, ahead of the “Run As One” 5k run/walk.

Team Red, White & Blue, Team Rubicon and The Mission Continues are three national veteran organizations with New York communities. They banded together for their fourth annual “Run As One” 5k, which was created in 2012 by Team Rubicon to honor one of its founding members, Clay Hunt.

The 28-year-old Texan was a former decorated Marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, struggled with depression and post-traumatic stress after returning home, and ultimately committed suicide in 2011.

“[The run] is to remember [Clay] and for all those that are out there,” said Quinn, 35, an Army veteran of Brooklyn, running for his second time.

An analysis published by the Annals of Epidemiology in February reported findings on U.S. veteran-suicide. Nearly 1.3 million U.S. veterans who served from 2001 to 2007 were followed from the time of discharge to Dec. 31, 2009. It was found that 1,868 deaths were from suicides (351 deployed; 1,517 non-deployed). The causes of death were obtained from the National Death Index, which collects data on every U.S. death.

Often, many veterans lose their feeling of family when they leave their platoon and reintegrate back into America. While coming from various backgrounds and towns, many who ran on Saturday joined one of the veteran organizations to get that family feeling back.

“It’s about building genuine, authentic relationships”

Quinn served in Iraq from 2003 to 2004 and 2006 to 2008. He was also a civilian advisor in Afghanistan from 2010 to 2011.

“The first year or two out of the military was the hardest year of my life,” Quinn said.

Joe Quinn and Gena Rosselli-Geller, Athletic Director of Team Red, White & Blue, after the “Run As One” 5k run/walk on March 28, 2015. Photo by Stacey Kilpatrick

He was used to waking every morning, completing physical training and eating beef stew MRE’s (meals ready to eat) beside the same brother-and-sisterhood – a built-in social network. But when he left, that suddenly disappeared.

“That’s what you miss the most,” Quinn said.

He found himself living in Boston without family, friends or social support. His military life had disintegrated. But eventually when he returned to his hometown of New York, he joined Team Red, White & Blue and grew into a new family.

Mike Erwin, a retired veteran and friend of Quinn’s, founded Team Red, White & Blue in 2010. After participating in other service organizations and understanding the positive effects that physical activity and social engagement brought veterans, he wanted to create his own organization. Team Red, White & Blue consists of chapter and community programs that encourage veterans to stay active and local in their area, veteran athletic camps introducing sports and activities, and a leadership development program involving education, training, mentorship and leadership experiences.

“For me it’s about building genuine, authentic relationships,” Quinn said. “A lot of the time it’s not what we do, it’s who [we] do it with.”

Along with many runs, Team Red, White & Blue gathers for barbeques, yoga classes and other activities where the community comes together as one.

“I believe if vets have just simple social support, not a lot, it just takes that friend, that relationship that they can kind of get over the hump and transition successfully, and they’ll be great assets to the community.”

Nationwide, Team Red, White & Blue has around 56,000 members.

“I had to join”

Aaron Scheinberg, 34, of Harlem, helped organize this year’s run as Executive Director at The Mission Continues, alongside Quinn with Team Red, White & Blue and Team Rubicon. He was running for his third time.

Aaron Scheinberg, 34, and Kate Connolly, 24, ran in the fourth annual “Run As One” 5k, in honor of veterans across the country. Photo by Stacey Kilpatrick

In Iraq he served as a tanker and an Army officer, and later as a civil affairs officer at Fort Hood in Texas, Fort Monroe in Virginia and Fort Knox in Kentucky. When he returned to America in 2008, reintegrating was tough.

“Your brain has been wired to be in a combat situation and you’re dealing with really high-stress situations that are life and death,” Scheinberg said. “That just takes time.”

He explained that his role overseas was essentially that of a mayor of an Iraqi town, working on civil affairs projects, spending millions of taxpayer’s money on essential services, and setting up town councils for 250,000 people.

“Then you come home and you’re looking for a job and you’re definitely underemployed as soon as you start out,” he said. “You don’t feel like all the stuff that you learned and you put into work is actually being used when you come home.”

Post-duty, Scheinberg earned his master of public administration at Harvard University and his master of business administration at Columbia University before working fulltime as a strategy consultant at a top management firm in New York. On paper, he looked like a successful transition, he said. But he was missing something deeper, a sense of purpose and a connection to something bigger that he felt in Iraq.

“The Mission Continues came along and offered me the opportunity to help veterans reintegrate and also make an impact in my community through service,” Scheinberg said. He’s been with the organization for the past three years working for the northeast region in New York.

“I had to join,” he said.

The Mission Continues was established in 2007 by retired Navy SEAL Eric Greitens. After he returned home from serving in Iraq, he realized while visiting wounded Marines at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland that many still wanted to serve their country, even if they were no longer in the military.

The organization offers programs for veterans and others who want to serve. Its Fellowship Program is open to post 9/11 veterans who volunteer part-time for six months at the community organization of their choice. They receive a living stipend, complete a leadership development program and further develop skills. Veterans of all eras, active duty, guard, reserve and Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) can contribute on a service platoon, volunteering in their community as often as they like. Lastly, The Mission Continues also offers service missions to anyone who wants to volunteer on single or multi-day projects.

A group photo of the “Run As One” 5k participants of Team Red, White & Blue, Team Rubicon and The Mission Continues. Photo by Stacey Kilpatrick

“[All three organizations] believe that through comradery, through community and through a sense of purpose that veterans can thrive and be contributing leaders in our community back home,” Scheinberg said.

Between its Fellowship Program and its service platoon program, The Mission Continues boasts around 4,500 members nationwide.

There are currently 33 service platoons across the country, with some of the cities offering multiple platoons. New York has two, with a Brooklyn platoon in development. The Manhattan platoon works around youth education and mentorship, while the Bronx platoon revolves around neighborhood beautification and the arts.

“[The public] is going to look at us, not as victims or screwed up veterans, [but] they’re going to look at us as leaders and assets and … that’s why I love it.”

“I saw parallels in my own life”

Awaiting the start of the run with Scheinberg was Kate Connolly. This was her third time running.

“I’m a civilian, so it’s nice to see that there are civilian supporters here,” said Connolly, 24, of Middletown, Conn. “It’s a great way to meet new people and just kind of understand that there are so many other folks out there with similar interests as you and then also you’re just a part of something bigger than yourself and I think that’s important.”

Connolly became involved with Team Red, White & Blue and Team Rubicon in 2011, shortly after suffering a severe knee injury that sidelined her Wesleyan University athletic career and put her in physical therapy.

Team Rubicon was founded after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Jan. 12, 2010. Two Marines, Jake Wood and William McNulty, paired with six other veterans and first responders, gathered medical supplies from friends, headed to Haiti and treated thousands in need. As part of Team Rubicon, veterans utilize their skills and military background to work with first responders and volunteers during emergency response deployments.

“I had always defined myself as an athlete and I felt like I was kind of a little bit limited in what I could do … being restricted by that knee injury,” Connolly said.

Working through therapy, she met a veteran and the two swapped stories. They understood one another’s struggles and she saw parallels in her life. Eventually gaining speed, she participated in Wounded Warrior Project’s Soldier Rides, a four-day cycling event, where she met another veteran.

“He said, you know Kate, you gotta do some more with Rubicon, you gotta do some more with Team Red, White & Blue,” she said, “And through that I ended up just really connecting and feeling like I had a second family with these groups of people.”

“We’re working together”

Leaving Grand Army Plaza, the mob of red, white and blue crossed West 59th Street onto East Drive at 11:30 a.m. Flag-bearers stood at the front of the group. When sounded, those who elected to walk had a head start before the runners took off.

Those who walked made one lap around the lower loop of Central Park, while those who ran made two.

The tight-knit crowd that began as one complete waving American flag eventually separated along the course by skill level, but one by one crossed the imaginary finish line at Columbus Circle, welcomed by cheers and “Run As One” leaders. Some ended their “Run As One” by completing push-ups – the bravest one-armed – before Quinn jumped a few steps on the Maine Monument for a quick word.

“Good work everyone,” he said, before reminding them of the social that followed at The Perfect Pint and shaking a number of hands.

“All in all we’re working together to help provide that social support for veterans,” Quinn said. “[We’re here to] connect better into the community.”

Neck-deep, in what some still treat as a boys’ club, the women at Bushwick-based “Tom Tom Magazine: a Magazine About Female Drummers” defy stereotypes with their publication and unique approach to giving drum lessons.

The magazine, now in its’ fifth year of publication, aims to shine a light on the otherwise less exposed world of female drummers. In 2009, editor and founder Mindy Abovitz decided to Google female drummers and was less than satisfied with what she saw.

“She found nothing but pictures of women holding drums; sexual fantasy type things,” said Mickey Vershbow, 23, the section editor of the magazines’ techniques section. “She decided to start a magazine dedicated to female drummers, to elevate their status in the industry and give them a voice.”

Issues are released in a quarterly cycle, each issue featuring a different drummer. The drummers featured play in a variety of groups and settings, with a cross section ranging from the classical performers to a member of Beyoncé’s live band. The diversity of their features has made Tom Tom the third most popular drum magazine in the country.

Natalie Baker, one of the primary directors at the drum academy. Photo Credit- Raz Robinson

“When Tom Tom started, there might have been a sense of, oh yeah I want to be in that magazine just because I want to support what they’re doing,” said Natalie Baker, 25, a director at the Tom Tom Academy. “But the cool thing is, that at this point, the magazine has gotten so big that it’s treated as a really serious drum magazine that you want to be in inherently.”

In the wake of the publication’s success, Abovitz approached Vershbow and Baker about starting up a drum school that caters exclusively to women. The team hit the ground running and in September 2014 began holding lessons on the stage of local music venue The Wick.

Moving through a maze of un-insolated cold hallways, up several flights of concrete steps, and finally through a door that could just as easily lead to a maintenance closet is the academy’s studio. Inside the small space a single lamp clipped to the handle of a speaker shines directly into the corner illuminating the words “Tom Tom”, decoratively painted along the wall.

“Fortunately, we happen to share the office with them [The Wick] and they were happy to let us use their space during the daytime when they weren’t having shows,” said Baker. “It was this great transition where we had this idea and didn’t have $50,000 to start it up. Once it became apparent that people were into it we were able to invest in our first lesson studio.”

The mood lit studio and chalkboard wall, covered in half erased musical notation, cast a shadow on the single mahogany drum kit and musical equipment arranged neatly against the adjacent wall.

From their new studio, located in the same warehouse as The Wick and well known Bushwick rehearsal space The Sweatshop, the academy teaches students from a wide range of demographics, the youngest student being five and the oldest 45.

According to Baker, there is something powerful and appealing about seeing a drum school that uses women in its’ marketing as has only women as instructors. She emphasized how the stagnant imagery that surrounds drumming in the media is part of what might keep women away.

“Having a female instructor really puts me at ease because drumming is such a male dominated thing” said Josslynn Riot, 27, a new student at the school. “You don’t see that many female or women identified drummers, and as a woman it feels really important to be in that space.”

The interest in reaching out to women who have been shied away from playing the drums informs the academy’s desire not just to influence the known face of drumming, but to change the way the instrument is taught.

In a lesson, Vershbow’s tone is quintessentially that of an educator, confident and encouraging. She counts and plays along with her students, never glossing over the nuances and always considering their needs.

“Most schools have this approach of, if you’re going to take lessons you have to take it very seriously and there’s only one way to do things,” said Vershbow. “Our approach is to say drumming can be a part of your life in any way you want it to be.”

Don’t be fooled by the relaxed nature of that statement, Vershbow forged her skills as a drum performance major at the Berklee College of Music. Similarly the instructors at the academy are all seasoned players and performers.

“If you want to take lessons every once and a while that’s cool and we encourage it,’” said Vershbow. “If you want to play, practice a lot, and really want to get serious about it, our instructors are equipped for that too.”

At the core of everything, the Tom Tom Academy looks to expose as many people to drumming as they can, and running a school for a suppressed group of musicians is the way in which they facilitate that need.

“We’re not trying to create a separation between women who play drums and men who play drums,” said Vershbow. “We really want to revolutionize the industry by leveling the playing field.”

New Yorkers braced for what Mayor Bill DeBlasio has warned could be the largest snowstorm in city’s history Monday, with forecast wind gusts of 50 miles per hour and up to three feet of snow accumulation. The Mayor urged New Yorkers to return home before Monday evening rush hour to avoid blustering winds, dangerously low visibility, and treacherous roads.

“I’m actually from Florida – a lot of hurricanes there – so, I’m getting ready, getting basic stuff. A lot of crackers, some fruit, some bread, just some stuff to last three or four days I guess.” Her plans for the evening: “Stay in and not work,” she said.

As snow began to blanket bustling Manhattan Avenue, retailers like Charlie Shaw, owner of Cheap Charlie’s, weren’t put out by the threat of massive snowdrifts and slick roads. “Most of my business for the snowstorm will be the salt, the shovels, the car cleaning and windshield wiper fluids. I’ll come in tomorrow too because I know people are going to look for this stuff in the morning,” he said.

In previous years Mr. Shaw said he has run out of de-icing salt during major storms, but this year he’s banking on moving a lot of it. He’s stocked a surplus in anticipation of winter storms like Juno.

In expectation of the worst, the MTA tweeted a readiness to shut down all train and bus service, along with Metro North and Long Island Rail Road trains by 11pm at the behest of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. As mass transit hunkers down for a blizzard predicted to pummel the city, Greenpoint resident Emily Guthrie wasn’t fazed.

“I’m from the Midwest, it snows a lot. I think New Yorkers freak out a little too much about it,” she said. Still, Guthrie thought it wise to stock up on a few items at the C-Town Supermarket on Manhattan Avenue just in case.

One last stop for many in the neighborhood is Polemost Liquor, also on Manhattan Avenue. Clerk Thomas Dunne said he anticipated an uptick in sales as he salted his storefront entrance. He said winter storms like this tend to be a boon for the store. “Business is better. There’s nothing to do and people are just staying home, relaxing, drinking wine, so we sell more.”

Blustery winds and icy temperatures didn’t deter a crowd of hundreds from showing support for 2014 TCS New York City Marathon runners in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill neighborhood today. On the corner of Lafayette and S. Portland Avenues, spirits were high and neon paper signs held higher as a river of runners of New York City’s 44th annual marathon rushed by.

Planted firmly at the course’s ninth mile marker, sisters Naerim Kim and Chaerim Smith screamed in support of their older sister Lana Kim, who passed just moments before. “She’s looking good. She’s looking really strong,” said Kim, of the Financial District. Kim attends the marathon every year, but this race is particularly special because she gets to cheer on family. “This is her first time to ever run it, so we’re here to support her,” said Kim.

To her side, and with neon-yellow banner in hand, stood sister Chaerim Smith, of Washington, D.C. All puns aside, for the sisters, athleticism truly does run in the family. Smith recently ran her own marathon. “We were both training at the same time. She came down to see me and cheer me on at the Marine Core Marathon last week, so I’m here now for her,” she said, referring to her sister.

By mile nine, runners appeared to be easing into a comfortable stride which would send them weaving – and ultimately heaving – through a 26.2 mile course spanning all five of the city’s boroughs, and finally concluding in the southwestern corner of Central Park in Manhattan. The New York City Marathon is the largest in the world, and Kim and Smith aimed to support their sister in at least two boroughs. Their next stop was Harlem, where they aimed to cheer their sister Lana Kim on along the course’s 22nd mile.

While Kim has no plans to run a marathon any time soon, Smith says it’s that sense of accomplishment that keeps her running competitively. “It gives such a good sense of discipline, and it’s a great challenge,” she said.

Pat Corsilli, 64, of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, proudly shows off the hats and gloves she collected from warm runners at 2014 TSC New York CIty Marathon. She will give the clothing to people in need. Photo by Virginia Gunawan.

All that was left from the chilly 2014 TSC New York City Marathon in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, by 11.30 a.m today, was the amount of clothing thrown off the bodies of the runners.

After running two miles across the Verrazano Bridge, they started to strip off their gloves, hats, and jackets.

Standing on the side of 92nd street, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, Pat Corsilli, 64, loudly cheered as the runners ran past her discarding their layers as the sound of beating drums, courtesy of a drum filled the streets. But while waiting for the next wave of runners, she went to middle of the street and collected the clothing the runners threw off their now warmed up bodies.

“If you could give me the hats and the gloves, I’ll give you this jacket,” said the Dyker Heights, Brooklyn residence to another clothes collector. “I don’t need this (jacket).”

Corsilli was not the only spectator who collected thrown clothing along the marathon course. But she was specifically looking for hat and gloves because she has a mission.

“I give them to people who want to shovel the snow,” she said.

During the winter, many Mexican immigrants would come knocking on her door and offer to shovel snow off her driveways.

“I’d say, I shovel my own snow, but if you need hats and gloves, you can help yourself,” she said.

She didn’t want any jackets because hats and gloves are easier to store and those are the most needed by the people who knocked on her door, she said.

Just before the next wave of marathon runners came, Pat Corsilli, 64, collected clothing thrown by the previous runners. Photo by Virginia Gunawan

Today, she collected a big bag of hats and gloves. She said she would then sort paired gloves and decent hats, wash them, and put it in a basket in front of her door.

For her the marathon has been exciting and she has been an enthusiast spectator for 16 years.

“You know today is the marathon when you can hear the helicopter hovering above your head,” Corsilli said.

But she has only started collecting hats and gloves three years ago. The idea came from the real estate agent who helped her find her current house in Brooklyn. The agent volunteers at her church’s clothing donations and Corsilli thought it was a great idea to help those who need them.

“These are wearable, why do we want to throw it away?” she said while rubbing off the autumn leave of a Union Jack glove.

As the last runner passed and the drummers stopped playing, sweeper trucks came along. Whatever clothing was left on the street would be swept away and considered garbage.

Domenic Recchia for Congress volunteers listening to Get Out the Vote strategy at a Brooklyn staging location. Recchia, a Democrat is running for New York’s 11th Congressional District, representing south Brooklyn and Staten Island. Photo by Zehra Rehman

By Zehra Rehman

“I’m tired,” Elaine Kateb heard over the intercom before it went silent. Kateb, 70, then went back down the apartment building’s stairs. She and many other volunteers had spent that rainy day ringing doorbells in their neighborhoods to persuade people to vote for Domenic Recchia.

The race for New York’s 11th Congressional District seat has been one of the most competitive in the current election cycle, although the latest poll by NY1/Capital New York/Siena College shows Republican Michael Grimm leading 53-34.

Grimm won his seat in 2010 by defeating a Democratic incumbent. Democrat Recchia is running against him to represent Staten Island and part of south Brooklyn. Grimm has the advantage of incumbency but has been indicted on 20 federal charges including tax evasion and fraud. Democrats have looked at this as an opportunity to win back the only Republican congressional seat in New York City.

The Recchia campaign is based in two offices in Staten Island and one in south Brooklyn. The Democratic Party has been strongly backing Recchia including providing resources such as campaign staff and political ads. The campaign is made up of a paid staff along with hundreds of volunteers. This includes a core group of regular volunteers who have been essential for the Recchia campaign. Ranging in age from 10 to 85 years old, they are motivated by a combination of idealism and a desire to see the incumbent defeated.

The Recchia campaign has divided its activities into three stages. The first phase, which ended on Oct. 10, was voter registration. The second stage is canvassing and persuading voters to choose Recchia. The last stage, from Nov. 1 to 4, is Get Out the Vote, during which the campaign will make about one-third of its total voter contact. The GOTV efforts will be launched from staging locations in Staten Island and Brooklyn. In these last four days, the campaign will receive volunteers from across the country including students, union members and congressional staffers. Until then, the campaign staff and their team of volunteers do all the work.

Daren Dowlat describes himself as “a volunteer who came in and never left.” He makes phone calls to get more volunteers, goes door to door to give voters information and carried out voter registration. Dowlat started volunteering while looking for a job in the information technology field. After working on the campaign, he is considering a change in career direction to “try to clean up politics.”

Because of a disability, 81-year-old Phyllis Masci is not able to go door to door. She comes to the campaign’s Brooklyn office three days a week to work the phone bank and recruit more volunteers. The rest of the week she makes phone calls from home. Her reasons for volunteering are a dislike of the incumbent and a belief that Recchia will be a good representative of her district in Washington.

“I know he will do a lot for the community. I know he will!” she emphasized.

Volunteer Pat Sanchez has been working on campaigns for decades, starting with fundraising for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign. A staunch liberal from Bay Ridge, she wants “to get this neighborhood blue.” She was surprised that Grimm remained popular in Staten Island after a video surfaced of him threatening a reporter. A recent opinion poll also showed that 24 percent of Staten Island voters are less likely to vote for Recchia because he lives in Brooklyn. The majority of the voters in the district live in Staten Island, where Grimm lives.

With the race drawing increasing attention, volunteers are arriving from outside New York and even one from another continent. Quentin Lefevre came from Paris to volunteer for the Recchia campaign. “I love the things that he wanted to implement in New York,” he said of Recchia. Lefevre also hopes to learn from this campaign and apply the experience to French political campaigns.

With a contact rate of less than 10 percent, door-to-door canvassing is a tedious part of campaigning, and one where volunteers are most needed. “Canvassing is becoming more important. Usually it doesn’t change minds but it turns out votes,” said Steven Brams, professor of politics at New York University. As part of the canvassing, campaign staff and volunteers try to persuade potential voters to sign pledge cards, which increase voter turnout by 6 to 8 percent.

After weeks of making phone calls for the campaign, Kateb went door-to-door for the first time on Oct. 11. Even when she made contact with voters, many refused to talk. While joking about “being too old for this” and it being “as much fun as a root canal,” she rang doorbells across Bay Ridge. She volunteers for Recchia because she wants to “work with candidates in whom I believe” and because Grimm is facing criminal charges. Above all, she feels a civic duty to participate in the political process, pointing out that “people in other countries would die for the opportunity to vote.”

With days left until the Nov. 4 election, campaign staff and volunteers are putting all their energy into getting their candidate elected.

Customers convene around a stand selling Russian produce along Brighton Beach Avenue. On Nov. 4 residents of Brighton Beach, New York, will be called to decide who will be their next representative in the 45th District of the New York State Assembly. Photo by Ilaria Parogni

By Ilaria Parogni

In the 45th District of the New York State Assembly, Russian votes are a hot commodity.

This is, after all, the heart of Brighton Beach, that little corner of New York that is all borscht and matryoshka dolls, where one is more likely to hear “nyet” than “no” and “privyet” than “hello.” It is here that Steven Cymbrowitz, lower house representative for the district since 2000, will face the Russian American Ben Akselrod in the Nov. 4 elections.

Under these circumstances, transcending language barriers becomes essential – both for the voters and for the politicians. This might explain why Cymbrowitz is simultaneously engaged in what he defines as an “ongoing battle” with the New York State Board of Elections, which has consistently opposed his campaign to translate voting materials into Russian due to the financial cost it would entail.

Ensuring that elections are accessible to Russian speakers, however, is crucial in Cymbrowitz’s district, which comprises some of the neighborhoods with the highest concentration of Russian-speaking immigrants in the country, from Brighton Beach to Sheepshead Bay. “What we want to do is getting as many people to vote as possible. If language makes it easier for them to partake in the American system of voting, then we should do everything we can. We should encourage people to vote,” the assemblyman says.

The American Community Survey (ACS) estimates that 83,249 people born in Russia resided in New York State in 2013. Among them, 62,021 held U.S. citizenship. Russian is the fourth most spoken language in the state, after English, Spanish and Chinese. Yet, more than half of the Russian population cannot be considered fluent in English.

Under federal law, this is not enough for Russian speakers to obtain language support during election time. According to Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, minority language assistance, from translated ballots to on-site interpreters, is provided in accordance with the determinations of the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2011, the bureau identified Spanish, Korean, Chinese and Bengali as the four groups qualifying for assistance for the state of New York. Yet, naturalized Koreans are fewer than Russians with U.S. citizenship and are more likely to be proficient in English, according to the ACS.

If the integration of the Russian community into the electoral process is truly the aim of Cymbrowitz’s campaign, he seems to be in tune with the most politically and socially active Russian Americans in New York. Having taken to heart the objective of increasing engagement among their highly insulated community, various organizations and people work daily to overcome the language barriers.

Russian-language radio channels, such as Davidzon Radio, keep the Russian American community informed with political analysis programs, while civic engagement seminars and English language classes are offered by organizations such as Shore Front Y, a Jewish community center with a significant Russian component. Their efforts might just be paying off: In talking with numerous Russian speakers in the district, not a single one expressed unease at taking part in the electoral process due to language difficulties.

Nevertheless, Cymbrowitz has turned the language access issue into a significant part of his political agenda. In 2012, he supported a bill that would have required the city of New York to translate into Russian “all information that is provided […] in English about the electoral process,” including ballots and registration documents. Governor Andrew M. Cuomo later vetoed the bill on the recommendation of the general counsel of the Board of Elections in the City of New York, Steven H. Richman, who opposed the measure citing financial difficulties.

“We thought that this would be the beginning of translating all the documents into Russian, but the New York City Board of Elections said that (it) didn’t have money to do the translation,” Cymbrowitz recalls. The bill was an expansion of a 2009 measure, also sponsored by the assemblyman, which was signed into law by Governor David Paterson and which mandated the provision of electoral information online and in print.

Cymbrowitz is not alone in calling for ballots and registration forms to be made available in Russian. In March 2013, Bill de Blasio, now New York’s mayor, urged Frederic M. Umane, president of the New York City Board of Elections executive office, to prioritize the translating of ballots, signs and other materials in Brooklyn into the language. “Failing to provide this growing population with voting materials in Russian has the potential to disenfranchise thousands of voters,” he wrote in a letter to Umane.

Vladimir Epshteyn, president of the Russian-American Voters Educational League, has joined the campaign for passage of the 2012 bill. “Every year we are asking… we are demanding the assembly and the state senate to allocate money to implement the decision,” he says.

Epshteyn has been involved in civic initiatives in New York since 1997. Every year he and a team of volunteers translate electoral materials into Russian.

Similarly, Dmitri Glinski, president of the Russian-Speaking Community Council of Manhattan & the Bronx, testified in August in front of the New York City Campaign Finance Board’s Voter Assistance Advisory Committee. He asked the board to apply the provisions envisioned in the 2012 bill and described the language barrier as “the biggest challenge to Russian speakers’ voter participation.”

Consideration of the elderly often is at the center of this advocacy. For many immigrants from the former Soviet Union, the English-language proficiency requirement for citizenship was waived under medical and age exemptions. Others passed the test, but, having settled in a heavily Russian-speaking district, they rarely had the chance to practice their English.

“Most of these things we are trying to do as per language are for our seniors,” Cymbrowitz says.

Walking around the district, however, one might get a different impression. Ivetta Popechenko, a Russian-speaking senior citizen, says she will absolutely take part in the elections. Does she speak English? “Not at all,” she says. “If I don’t understand something, I have children who speak perfectly, and they will help me.”

Sofia Goroshek, a retiree from Moldova who has lived in New York for the past 22 years, says that the language of the voting materials “basically doesn’t matter.”

Politicians often find alternative ways to reach out to the community. Some hire campaign staff keeping in mind the Russian constituency. Cymbrowitz boasts full-time Russian-speaking staff, while also sending out all of his campaign literature and newsletters in both Russian and English.

Elections may be competitive, but politicians and activists seem to have found common ground in their attempt to accommodate the Russian-speaking voters, ensuring they can vote while remaining comfortably inside their Russian bubble. Occasionally, however, someone will venture outside the bubble.

Moldovan-born Alexander Daich, 88, takes pride in having voted in elections ever since becoming a U.S. citizen more than 20 years ago. To keep informed, he reads the New York Post. “Truth to be told, I am an American retiree.”

“Where am I going to live as a single mom?” asked Alethea Adsiet, a PE physical therapist for the New York State Department of Education in Brooklyn. To raise her child alone, she is also working as a dancer and choreographer—and still barely making her ends meet. “This is my home, I have lived here for 11years, but now I may have to leave.”

Adsiet said she was shocked when she received the market rate lease renewal from Alma. “What happened to my rent stabilization?” she asked.

The Crown Heights complex was part of the former site of Brooklyn Jewish Hospital—a property around Prospect Place and Classon Avenue in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, which was purchased by Alma in the early 2000s. When the tenants sighed the lease for the first time, they were offered a rider from Department of Housing and Community Renewal promising that these unites were rent stabilized and were protected under the Emergency Rent Stabilization Act.

“Alma wants to deregulate all of the apartments here,” Adsiet said. “I cannot afford this high rent. I think I can’t afford to live in this city anymore.”

Over the past decade, while rents in Crown Heights community have increased dramatically, the Jewish Hospital complex remained affordable—this made it a choice for living for young professionals and the working class.

“I was specifically looking for rent stabilized housing and I found this one,” said Elizabeth Glowierht, who just graduated with her master’s degree in social work and has lived in the building for five years.

“I would never have moved in here if I had known that this wouldn’t be a long-term residence for me,” she said.

Community leaders think that the increased rent not only affects the tenants’ quality of life, but also the diversity of the neighborhood.

“What we want is the preservation of affordable housing and diversity in our borough,” said Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams. “So that the working class doesn’t have to struggle to stay.”

Adams said this is a citywide issue and believes there is great possibility that Alma will apply the same action to its residences in other boroughs.